Professional-level certifications

There is quite a leap between the associate-level certifications and the professional-level certifications. The domain coverage will be similar, you will need to know how to use the AWS services covered in much more depth, and the questions will certainly be harder. Assuming you took at least one of the associate-level certifications, expect to spend another 70 to 100 hours watching videos, reading, and taking practice tests to pass this exam.AWS removed the requirement of having to take the associate-level certifications before being able to sit for the professional-level certifications. However, it is still probably a good idea to take at least some associate exams before taking the professional-level exams.As is the case with the associate-level exams, once you pass one of the professional-level exams, it should take much less study time to give the other Professional exam as long as you don’t wait too long to take the second exam and forget everything.

Specialty certifications

I am lumping all the Specialty certifications under one subheading, but there is significant variability in the difficulty level between all the Specialty certifications. If you have a background in networking, you will be more comfortable with the Advanced Networking certification than with the Data Science certification.When it comes to these certifications, you may be better off focusing on your area of expertise unless you are collecting all certifications. For example, if you are a data scientist, the Machine Learning Specialty certification and analytics certification may be your best bet.Depending on your experience, expect to spend about these amounts of time:

• Security Specialty – 40 to 60 hours
• SAP Specialty – 40 to 60 hours
• Machine Learning Specialty – 50 to 70 hours
• Data Analytics Specialty– 40 to 60 hours
• Database Specialty – 30 to 50 hours
• Advanced Networking Specialty – 50 to 70 hours